


the shrike

by OnyxSphinx



Category: Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Wingfic, but not like. the fun kind dfsgfdh, minor gore, uhhh let's see, yassen's going through some hard times is all i can say
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 07:35:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29256804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OnyxSphinx/pseuds/OnyxSphinx
Summary: The first change is barely noticeable. The second is more earth-shattering, at least in its implications.
Relationships: Yassen Gregorovich & John Rider
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	the shrike

**Author's Note:**

> literally what am i even doing at this point. anyway have some incredibly self indulgent weird!wingfic

He's a young boy when the first change occurs. It's subtle; just the lengthening of his fingers; but for all that, it's excruciatingly painful. He wakes in the middle of the night, a scream choking in his throat, hands burning.

The door opens. "Yasha?" his mother asks, concern permeating the words; and sees her son curled tightly in on himself, sobbing openly for the first time in many years. Dropping to her knees, she reaches out. "Yasha, what's wrong?"

"I d—don't know," he manages, and lets out a howl of pain. His hands are burning, burning, burning; like hot oil has been poured onto them; the hairs on his arms raising. "My hands, they're—they're on fire!" The last word trails off into a sob; and he curls tighter into himself, back against the wall, and begins rocking back and forth, tears running freely down his face.

Eva frowns. "That's not possible," she says. "Let me see."

Hands shaking, he thrusts them out towards her, and she nearly gasps. They're covered in blood, and the nails are long and sharp, despite the fact that they should be blunted like her own. "Yasha," she says, face pale, even in the darkness of the room, "did you hurt yourself?"

"No!" He shakes his head. "I just woke up, and, and—they hurt so much, Mama!"

"What's going on?" His father; a thin, grey-haired man, with a pair of wire-rimmed glasses perched on his nose, enters the room. "Eva, what on earth is going on?"

She hesitates. What is she supposed to say? Finally, she settles on, "Yasha had a night terror—he scraped his hands on the walls flailing around."

Yasha, before her, gives her a puzzled look, sniffling; the pain must have abated somewhat, because he's no longer wailing in pain. Eva gives him a stern look and hopes it conveys to him the proper message. "Up," she says, "we'll get your hands washed off, and then we can all get back to sleep."

"Yes, Mama," he says, obediently rising, and follows after her to the kitchen, where there are pails of water lined up next to the sink. She makes him raise his hands over it, and pours the water over his hands.

He gives a sharp hiss. "That hurts!"

"I know, Yasha, I know. But it's going to be better," she promises, hoping that it will be. She doesn't know what to do if it's not. Gently, she rubs away the blood that's dried onto his fingers, wincing as he lets out another hiss of pain.

Finally, the blood is all washed away, and she sets the pail down; dries her hands on one of the towels. Yasha follows suit, and then rubs his palms on the legs of his pants. She stifles a smile at the action—only fourteen, he's still very much a child.

Yasha goes to bed at his mother's behest, and tries his very best to sleep. Despite his most ardent efforts, however, despite laying there for hours, he can't seem to get a single wink of sleep. Something restless coils beneath his skin, begging to be let out; and in the end, he rises from his bed, quietly, careful not to disturb his parents in the other room, or his grandmother, sleeping across from him on the floor, and slips out the door and into the faintly lit outdoors.

The fresh air invigorates him; and he finds himself running along the dirt road, legs pumping hard, his lungs expanding to take in enough oxygen. The wind whips through his hair, and he finds himself letting out a long whoop as he flies over the ground at astonishing speeds, eating up the distance like it's nothing.

Before he knows it, he's looped back to the house. He takes in the sight of it; small, one bedroom, the paint worn off and flaking in places; a single bird perched in the eaves. When he catches sight of it, he suddenly wants to yell, to scare it, to watch it leap in terror and dive down and miscalculate the distance and spear itself on the fence and wants to make his way over to its quivering body and dig his teeth into it and—

He shudders, suddenly coming back to himself. What's wrong with him? First, his hands are burning in the night, and now, he wants to kill an innocent bird, and—and—rip it apart with his bare hands.

Careful to stay quiet, he slips back into the house, and back to his bed; pulls the thin blanket over himself. Despite it, though, he feels like he's been dipped in a vat of ice water—save for his hands. His arms are crossed over his chest, and his hands, where they lay, tucked beneath his arms, are hot—radiating heat, like the one time when he was ten and he stayed outside in the sun too long and his skin got all red and burnt and peeled off in little bits.

He wonders if his hands are going to start peeling too, bits and pieces dropping off, only this time, they'll just keep dropping off until nothing is left but white bones.

His nails, sharp and long, dig into his skin; and he closes his eyes and tries very hard to forget about the pain of the night before, and the bird in the eaves.

* * *

Sharkovsky's dacha is a large thing; bloated and overgrown. It reminds Yassen of the old trees he used to see in the village, which had grown so large that they had begun to bow on themselves, boughs bending and groaning.

Yassen is tasked with cleaning it; which is how he knows all the secret hiding places, and the hidden alcoves, and the tucked away corners. In the beginning, it had been a nightmare; to try and re,ember all these places, to clean them, to avoid Sharkovsky's unremitting cane. In the first few months, Yassen's back was a bloodied mess more often than not.

Now, he is grateful for that knowledge. Sharkovsky returned from a business trip in the morning, and he's in a foul mood; dark and stormy; his voice full of thunder, and even the house staff have been skittish. Yassen, meraly being what he is, is doubly terrified.

He's chosen a deep alcove, hidden half behind one of the magnificent, huge cabinets, and he's pressed his back against the cold, hard stone, and he's hoping that Sharkovsky doesn't call for him.

It is then, in that moment, his back pressed against the cold, old stone, the frigidness seeping into his bones, that it begins.

Slow, at first, and utterly unremarkable; merely a tingle in his spine, and an odd quiver in his shoulders.

It grows, from there, into an inferno; and he thinks, perhaps, his blood is boiling; for the pain beneath his skin certainly makes it feel as if that's the case. He presses his back against the wall with a small groan, hoping the cold will help.

It barely does anything for the pain; instead, when he moves, it shoots up his spine like a bolt of lightning.

He presses his eyes closed; tries to keep his breathing even. If he makes a sound, he will surely be found out, and then—

He can't help it; a cry breaks out from his lips; and he's suddenly wailing as the pain lances through him in waves.  _ Oh, God, _ he thinks,  _ oh, God, I'm going to break apart and die, _ because his skin feels like it's being rent from his flesh and his blood like it's bursting from his veins.

He falls away from the wall, dropping to his knees, and curling around himself; his back aflame. His shoulders feel heavy, as if an insurmountable weight has been pressed to them.

"Boy!"

And now dread fills him as equally as pain; for that is Shakovsky's voice; full of rage. And it comes again: "Boy!"

He doesn't want to move; but he forces himself to his feet. "Yes, sir?" he calls out, hoping that his voice sounds acceptably meek, rather than exhausted and frightened.

"Boy! Fetch me a glass, and the bottle of vodka!"

That, he can do; the pain has abated somewhat, or at least enough for him to walk; and so he does; makes his way down to the grand cabinet in the living room, takes a glass out of it, and the bottle of vodka, too, and carries it over to Sharkovsky, pouring him half a glass.

"More," the man commands; and then: "what have you done to yourself?"

Yassen blinks; and without thinking, says, "What?"

It's the wrong thing; and Shakovsky's arm shoots out and grabs his shoulder, squeezing; forces him to his knees. He leans in, close, to Yassen's ear. "I said," he hisses, breath hot and already vodka-laden—he must have been drinking earlier—, "what have you done to yourself."

"I don't know what you mean, sir," Yassen manages, trying to ignore the crushing grip on his shoulder.

"The bloody wings!"

Again, the words burst forth from him without thought. "The wings?" he questions.

Again, it's the wrong thing to say; and Shakovsky backhands him, hard, the blow stinging, blood welling up in his mouth from where his teeth have bitten into his cheek. "You're lying to me," the man says, eyes beady, lips flecked with spittle. "You're trying to escape."

If only! He shakes his head. "No, sir, I swear it—"

"Silence!" He stands; and reaches into his pocket, pulling out a wicked looking knife. Yassen's seen it before—mostly being used intimidate his underlings. He knows it's been used for other things, too, because once, Shakovsky had him clean the blood off of it, lest it get rusted.

Now, it glints in the light of the chandelier, and Yassen, suddenly, is very afraid. "Sir," he says, hesitantly, "is there anything else I can get—?"

"Silence!" Shakovsky snaps, again, and his eyes are glinting with a horrid, horrid light. He shifts the knife from one hand to the other. "Stand," he commands, and Yassen does; and he suddenly feels the weight of the wings on his shoulders, and thinks again about the glint in the man's eyes, and he realises, and starts, and tries to run—

But Sharkovsky, old as he is, is still quick; and like a leopard, he pounces; pinning Yassen to the ground, and the knife is at the base of his shoulder, and suddenly, pain, worse than that of any he's felt before, shoots through him.

"No!" he screams, tears coursing down his cheeks, "no, no,  _ no— _ " but it's too late, for the knife is already through the skin, and Shakovsky gives a sharp twist and there's a crack and then the knife slides free—

It passes in a blur, the second one; Yassen's in too much shock to register it properly. When Shakovsky lets him up, Yassen catches a glimpse of grey wings, with a splotch of white in the middle—large and magnificent, once, but now bloodied, and laid across the ground—before the man shoves him out of the room with a snarl.

Yassen flees to the tiny room he sleeps in, and curls up on the cot; runs his hands over his shoulders. They—fingers long, nails sharp—come away bloodied. His back  _ aches, _ all the way down to the bones, and he can feel the phantom of the limbs Shakovsky hacked away. Suddenly, he realises, for a moment, he had a chance at freedom—and rather than take it, he gaped like some sort of fish, and stood around in confusion, and then that chance was ripped from him an instant later.

Laying there, curled up on the cot, sobbing for the first time in five years, he makes a resolution to himself: the next time the chance for escape comes, no matter how daunting it may be, he is going to seize it, and not let go until he's dead.

That night, when he sleeps, he dreams again of the songbird in the eaves, and of it swooping down and impaling itself on the fence, bleeding out as it quivers and croaks, terrified, its last breaths shuddering through its tiny frame.

* * *

When Hunter sees him, he knows. Yassen can see it in his face. He somehow knows everything that has brought Yassen to this point in his life. Suddenly, Yassen desperately wishes to impress him, to live up to the exacting standards he's sure that Hunter will set. The giant pair of wings—blue-jay, he recognises, from studying a bird guide in the library—hardly hurt.

Hunter's first order of business is to take him to the shooting range. Yassen can shoot already, but, he tells him, he can't truly  _ shoot. _ That's a skill he needs to learn, if he's to be successful in the field.

So Hunter teaches him to shoot; and Yassen, the ever-dedicated pupil, learns.

Three months later, once Hunter is satisfied with his performance, he takes him with him on a mission.

It's the second mission Yassen's been on, but he hopes desperately that it'll be better than his last.

They spend two days trooping through the forest before their supplies run out. It's then that Hunter turns to him, and says, quite clearly, "Go fetch us dinner."

Yassen blinks. "Dinner?" he echoes, "we don't have any."

"That's why you're to fetch it," Hunter says; like he's speaking to a four year old. "There's plenty of rabbits in the brush, go get us some. It'll be good training for your stealth abilities. You could use some work on it." It's said quite plainly, and for that, Yassen is grateful.

"Alright," he says, finally; and unslings the bag over his shoulder, and takes out the pieces of the riffle, beginning to fit them together.

Hunter speaks again. "No. Take the handgun."

Yassen doesn't question it; just places the pieces of the riffle back into the bag and does as told; makes his way through the brush, keeping an eye out for rabbits.

In the end, he shoots at three, and catches two, which Hunter says is quite a decent catch; and the praise makes Yassen warm. "We'll eat heartily tonight," Hunter says, more to himself than anything; and makes Yassen gather firewood.

The fire's roaring not long later, and it warms them. Yassen leans his back against the tree, and closes his eyes halfway, watching Hunter cook the rabbits. His shoulders itch, as they often do in cold weather, but there's nothing to be done for it, because the itch is truly an ache, and the ache is a longing for something he can't have.

They eat, and then lay down to sleep.

The moon is high in the sky when the pain starts up; his arms burning; and Yassen, woken from his sleep, wonders what it will be this time. Spines, perhaps? Who knows.

He must have let out some sound of discomfort, because a moment later, Hunter's risen from his place. "Changes?" he asks; and Yassen doesn't even bother to wonder how he knows, because he's Hunter—of course he knows.

"Yes," is all he says. "My arms."

"Hmm. It'll be feathers," Hunter predicts. "Go back to sleep."

"I can't." The admission rips itself from him, and he realises a second later that it's quite true. The pain is simply too distracting. Not as bad as his shoulders had been, but still quite awful.

"Then go hunt."

"What?"

"We'll need more food for the morning, and if you can't sleep, you might as well be useful." With hunter, it's always about being useful. Yassen appreciates it, in a way. Hopes, one day, that his mind will function similarly. It'll have to, for this line of work.

"Alright," he says, and rises. "The handgun?"

"The handgun," Hunter agrees.

Yassen comes back when the sun has begun to rise above the horizon. He's two birds in hand, and there's blood on his hands. He doesn't find that he minds it.

This time, when Hunter rises, he gives Yassen a calculating look. "What did they look like?" he asks. "Before you lost them."

His wings, he means. "Large. Grey. With a white spot in the middle of each."

"Hm." Hunter begins to kindle the fire. "Let me check your arms."

Dutifully, Yassen rolls up his sleeves, and lets Hunter take a look at his arms. There's short, grey feathers laying flat against skin; and when Hunter brushes them, they stand up. He hums again. "Don't bother cooking the birds," he says. "You'll do better to eat them raw."

Yassen blinks. "Eat them raw?" he echoes.

Hunter nods. "Yes, yes. Eat them raw."

Yassen frowns. "Seems like a good way to catch a disease." He doesn't know as much about diseases as, say, Doctor Three does, but he knows enough to think that it wouldn't be advisable.

"It'll be good for you," Hunter says. "Trust me."

Yassen does. So, carefully, he spreads the wings of the first bird, and takes a bite.

The feathers fill his mouth; and beneath them, blood and flesh; and the flavour bursts across his tongue; and he suddenly wonders why, all those years ago, he had been terrified by the urge to bite into that bird—for it's like coming home.

Hunter's eyes are filled with something like pride; and Yassen takes another bite of the bird, and thinks,  _ this is what I was made for _ .

* * *

He stands, poised on the edge of the roof; watching the mark. It's a young man, in his early twenties, and he wears a cravat. Something about his mannerisms reminds Yassen of Shakovsky, all those years ago; perhaps in how he moves—his gait is the same.

There's a faint ripple of disgust; but it passes quickly enough; and then Yassen takes the shot. It rings through the air loudly, and then the man drops like a stone.

Yassen tucks the gun away, and makes his way down to the street proper. He's still got a few hours left in the city, and he's booked a table at a prestigious restaurant, one that specialises in fowl.

It's a marvellous place. He orders quail, easy, and ignores the glances that the waiters give each other. It tastes marvellous—just the first bird did, all those years ago.

His shoulders barely ache.

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me at [autisticharrow](https://autisticharrow.tumblr.com/) on tumblr


End file.
